


House Party Protocol

by Brosedshield



Series: MCU Character Studies [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Construction, External POV, F/M, Gen, I have no idea what the official tag for that is wow brain not working, Narrated by a person of color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 10:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3848353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry Hernandez worked in construction. He built things, fixed things, and he made his (modest, middle-class) fortune building and fixing for one Tony Stark, genius and disaster of Stark Industries. And their connection happened mostly by accident</p><p>A retrospective on Tony Stark from the guy who puts in new windows after parties, repairs blaster burns in the labs, and knows that Mr. Stark's computer's name is Jarvis and he's really very intelligent. Most action takes place in key points in IM3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House Party Protocol

**Author's Note:**

> I see Age of Ultron tomorrow so if I want to knock this idea out of my head (and this WIP out of my folder) I need to do it RIGHT NOW.
> 
> Beta'd ages ago by perpetuallybemused and completely changed since. You have her to thank for the altercation at the beginning, and me to thank for the typoes. :)

Five horrified second after the second of the Manderin's missles slammed into Malibu Point 10880, Malibu, Henry Hernandez was on the phone getting some of his best guys off the New York Project and on a plane to L.A.X..

When he arrived on-sight, Ms. Potts was frazzled and tear streaked, giving a statement to the police and bomb control unites crawling over the shattered remains of the Stark Malibu Mansion. The look on her face when she saw him pull up in his clean but utilitarian H&H Construction van was pure relief.

Henry waited quietly while the local guys he'd called piled out the van and started to assess the damage from a safe distance. Safe both from structural instability and the first-responders, who didn’t always take kindly to construction crews in their crime scene. When Ms. Potts finished giving her statement, she turned smoothly to him.

"Henry, thank you," she said. "I—" She had to stop and take a deep breath, visibly steeling herself. "Structural stability is the key issue. Also securing and clearing the Workshop. I don't know what Tony's been--well, you how he is, he could have a radiation leak giving him hives and he'd need Jarvis to—but I want you to do the best you can with a small core crew."

"Only people I trust implicitly," Henry agreed, mentally shifting gears from _oh shit he’s dead_ to _we can handle this_. Ms. Potts was not acting like a woman whose boss, lover, and full-time responsibility had just plunged to a watery grave.

He had seen her once shortly after Mr. Stark had vanished in Afghanistan, while he was doing some work in the New York factory. Then, she had had the air of someone who was unsure whether or not her world had come to an end. She had carried herself with poise, aplomb and determination, expecting the worst. He would have been surprised if nightmares about Mr. Stark’s fate _hadn’t_ been keeping her up at night.

Today, standing beside the wreckage of the home they had shared, faced with cameras from more than a dozen international new agencies and paparazzi slobbering for a glimpse of the wreak an international terrorist had made of her life, she looked...well, she looked pissed and determined, worried and relieved.

Henry had seen that look on Ms. Pott’s face more than once. Tony Stark (when he was alive but doing something stupid that could get him killed) did that to a person.

"We'll start right away, around the clock," he added. "I'm calling some guys in from New York." They had completed a chunk of construction on Stark Tower already (though since the Battle of New York his guys, and Mr. Stark himself had taken to calling it _Avengers Tower_ ) but Stark Industries had kept H&H in fairly steady business repairing and renovating the buildings nearby that had been damaged in the Chitauri invasion. Work on that would continue, but the Malibu Mansion would take priority. He wouldn't offer much overtime (too long on-shift could make guys sloppy, and he sure as hell didn't want was sloppy work when it came to shattered Stark Tech and a Tony Stark prototypes) but he could bring in enough to have a fairly good crew working long hours. He'd vet every last one himself. A disaster like this, centering on Mr. Stark's personal R&D lab, would be an excellent opportunity for Hammer Industries or Ozcorp spies to try and sniff out tech advancements straight from the SI source.

"Good," she said. "That's good. Thank you, Henry. You have the usual line of credit, let me know if it’s not enough. Now excuse me, I have a firestorm to manage." She smiled at him, tight and tired, and turned away, confident that he would take care of the physical remains of attack on the Mansion, while she handled the more theoretical, economical and political aspects. Ms. Potts left with a pretty brunette woman who seemed shaken but not in shock.

Henry nodded once and turned back to his crew. Tony Stark messes were bigger than normal people's messes, but he was confident that he and H&H could take care of this one too.

Henry (Enrique to his family, Quique to his _abuela_ , and Ricky to one asshole in high school who had also taken great joy in mocking Henry for his accent until he’d learned to hide it as much as he could) had become a small business owner and main contractor for Stark Industries (and Tony Stark in particular) mostly by accident.

Henry had been a minor partner in the small H&H (not even one of the original H’s) and chief foreman on a project in one of the Stark Labs in New York when Mr. Stark showed up out of the blue to “surprise inspect” the Lab. Henry suspected that he had been bored with his own workshop and had wanted to poke a nose into whatever toys the N.Y. R&D eggheads might have managed without him.

It was hard to say whether Mr. Stark had been coming off a bender or flying into a moment of creative genius. He wore a torn Metallica t-shirt, stained jeans, and dark wrap-around glasses that neatly disguised the state of his eyes. With a frazzled Ms. Potts in toe, he had walked into SI like he owned the joint (which he did), outwardly completely unconcerned with the low-level panic his arrival caused among the lab’s usual employees.

Henry kept his eyes on his work and not on one of the youngest billionaires in the world. Because he was looking anywhere but at the genius and disaster of Stark Industries, he saw one of his crew snap a picture on his cell of the great Tony Stark.

If it had been one of the younger guys, in awe of Mr. Stark and trying to get a pic to show off for his girlfriend, Henry might have let it rest at deleting the image and giving the kid a chewing out, but it was Chad Sloughan, one of his habitual troublemakers. The guy came in just shy of late every day, talked back to his supervisors, did the minimum quality of work and was the most likely source for any nasty rumor going around the business.

Henry lost his cool in one of those controlled bursts that often startled coworkers and casual acquaintances (though family and close friends who knew his _abuela_ would recognize and respect the fire).

In two long stride he was grabbing the phone out of the Sloughan’s hand. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Sloughan looked at him with wide eyes for as second, before anger took over his features. “What the fuck am I…? What are you doing! Give me back my phone I weren’t doing nothing.”

“You come into my crew late, you do shit work, and now you’re taking fucking pictures in a Stark Lab of Mr. Stark. Do you have pride in your work? Do you have respect for me, yourself or our client? Because I’m not seeing it, and I’ve been looking, Sloughan. Did you even _read_ the non-disclosure form you signed before you got on this crew or did you just put down your X because you couldn’t fucking read the fucking words.”

“Fuck off you, fucking prick.” Sloughan made a grab for his phone and Henry dropped it. And then stepped on it with his steel-toed boot. Instead of backing up from the other man he moved forward, until they were glaring at each other eye to eye.

“You respect our client and his privacy, you respect this organization, and if you can’t do any of those you can take funny pictures on your own time in your own home because you ain’t fucking doing it here and getting time and a half for it.” And then, just in case he hadn’t been clear (Sloughan had shown himself slow on these things in the past) he pulled the visitor’s ID off the asshole’s collar and pointed at the door. “You’re fired, get out.”

Sloughan hesitated, and then, seeing the SI security that had arrived seconds after the altercation began, slunk off toward the door. Henry glared at him all the way out.

When Henry turned back to the work (and trying to figure out where he could put the shattered remains of the guy’s cell), he almost ran straight in to Ms. Potts.

Later he would learn to recognize the light in her eye as the type of acquisitive impulse that had probably made her to accept Mr. Stark's assistant position and would bring Stark Industries great success in the non-weapons regions of the business world. At the time, he had just wondered if he was going to end up as fired as Sloughan.

"That was quite a display, Mr...?"

"Hernandez," Henry said. "Henry Hernandez."

Ms. Potts nodded slightly, as though she had a mental list of everyone who could have been in the building today and he was indeed listed (he wouldn’t put it past her). "Is the work going to be delayed because you had to let that gentleman go?"

Henry did a quick sweep of who he had left and what he could ask of them. "It shouldn't, ma'am. We've still got enough to--it should be fine, ma'am."

"But it would have been easier and faster with him. You really care that much about Mr. Stark's privacy?" She turned back to look at Tony, who was shamelessly flirting with one of the more attractive female eggheads (brunette, with her hair tied up in a messy but attractive bun). "He certainly doesn't."

Henry could have said many things, about how Chad Sloughan had been almost asking to be fired for a long time, how he wasn't sure himself why, but he decided to go for the simple, basic truth. "I think that Mr. Stark has the right to privacy in his own facility, to have a few spaces where he don't have to worry about people taking photos of him. Maybe I can't guarantee anyplace that can be, and maybe Mr. Stark don't have that expectation, but me and my guys shouldn't be part of the problem. None of my clients need to watch their back when we come in to fix the place up, they just need to tell me what needs to be fixed, and what don’t. A person shouldn’t have to worry about looking perfect and make-up and stuff when they just need something fixed."

He stuttered to a stop because Mr. Stark had come over, movements just a little loose as though someone had forgotten to tighten up the bolt in his arms and legs after they oiled him up. "What's up, Pep, this guy flirting you up? I heard something about makeup."

Ms. Potts' mouth curved up. "That was about you, Tony."

"I'm insulted you think I need enhancements for this look." Mr. Stark grinned at her, mouth a little too wide. "All natural, baby."

"Of course it is. Tony, may I introduce Henry Hernandez, who recently stopped a would-be paparazzi from snapping a shot of your current stunning good looks. Mr. Hernandes, this is Tony Stark."

He would have tried for a “Nice to meet you” or a “Mucho gusto” or some fucking thing, but what came out was "Yes." 

Mr. Stark stared at him for a second, and then tipped back his head and laughed. "I like him, Pep," he said to her.

"He seems to be doing good work," she agreed. 

"Give him more, yeah?" Tony looked around. "This place could certainly use it. Gold plate or something. You know, neon."

"Not my thought,” Ms. Potts said, “but I'll take care of it.”

The genius wandered away, and Henry was left standing nervously by Ms. Potts' side. She smiled at him, tired and harried, but pleased all the same. "Good to meet you, Mr. Hernandez,” she said. “We'll be in touch.”

After that day, Henry got a lot of very sensitive, very private, very lucrative work with Stark Industries: work on the R&D departments, the server banks, and Mr. Stark's private residences (which crossbred the tech of R&D with all the surreal trappings of a Playboy penthouse). With the money from that (and the generous tips and bonuses that worked their way into his paycheck and his company’s coffers) he eventually bought a partnership in H&H, and began working almost exclusively for SI, with the occasional work for a private celebrity Mr. Stark or Ms. Potts recommended. He never took anyone less than his most trusted to work on a Stark property: guys who could handle the bizarre and particular, and who know how to keep their mouths shut. He never worked for any SI competitor. He trusted himself and his crew, but he didn’t trust HammerTech or Ozcorp not to learn more about Mr. Stark just from watching the crew than they could in most other years.

Mr. Stark tended to keep his real secrets hard to find and impossible for anyone less than a genius to understand, but the things he couldn't hide were pretty damn big. Like JARVIS.

Everyone on Henry’s crew knew about JARVIS, but no one talked about him. Well, they'd talk a little. Usually when a new guy came on the crew he’d get a friendly warning to “Watch out for Stark's Computer!” and have to spend about a week trying to figure out if they were being trolled. Guys who had been around long enough knew that JARVIS was no joke, and a hell of a lot more than a high tech security system. 

To the best of this knowledge, Henry was the only one that had actually gotten an introduction. He'd been coming down to the workshop to make sure that he understood what Mr. Stark wanted, when he heard several voices.

He’d thought for a second that Mr. Stark was talking to himself, but when he came down he was alone, bent over his work bench fiddling with something that probably cost more than Henry’s generous annual salary while peering at a hologram.

Until a polite British voice apparently coming from the walls had announced: “Sir, I believe you have a visitor.”

Mr. Stark looked up, holding a screwdriver in his mouth, and smiled when he saw him. He spit the tool into his hand, and waved vaguely at the ceiling. “JARVIS, you’ve met Henry, haven’t you? Henry, come in! JARVIS, this is Henry Hernandez, he’s part of H& H, you know, they’re the nice folks that put in your secondary servers in New York.”

“I have seen him but we haven’t been introduced, sir.”

“We’ll have to fix that, let him in!”

Henry hovered at the door until it popped open on its own and the door opened invitingly. “Are you talking to your computer, Mr. Stark?”

“JARVIS is so much more! He’s Just A Really Very Intelligent System.” Mr. Stark spread his hands as though he had created something brilliant (which was undoubtedly true) but all Henry could think, after realizing that the words were an acronym (and not a really useless description of the thing—person—entity that he had been talking to), was that Mr. Stark had _really_ wanted those initials to spell “JARVIS”.

“An…artificial intelligence, sir?”

“Please, call me Tony,” Mr. Stark said. “I’ve told you that at least six times. Yes, you could call him an artificial intelligence, but that’s like reducing a Porche to four wheels and a combustion engine. Basically true but missing a lot of subtly. JARVIS is…well, most of what he is is secret, but he runs the house. If you need anything and I’m not here, he’d be the person to ask.”

“He’s…everywhere?” That thought was not, at the time, as reassuring as Mr. Stark seemed to think it should be.

“Yes, Mr. Hernandez.” JARVIS replied. “Or at least everywhere that Sir calls home. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

The voice sounded amused and friendly and Henry though it so strange that this was his life. Working for a genius, talking to a computer, and making the world a better, neater, better constructed place.

Henry could keep secrets, from the minor question of who Mr. Stark was sleeping with this week, to the greater ones of what kind of computer ran his home, and Henry and his team became the number one call when work had to be done on a Stark property. There was always a lot of work on a Stark property.

Tony Stark may have been a genius inventor, but he was also infinitely better at breaking things than rebuilding after himself.

For explosions in an R&D workshop or parties at the New York property that ended up stripping the finish from the hardwood floors, Henry would be called in, and he would call up his best guys to repair the damage. When the early tests of the Iron Man suit riddled all three floors of the Malibu Mansion with severe damage, Henry and H&H were called in. When Mr. Stark and Mr. Rhodes trashed the living areas of the Mansion and Mr. Stark knocked holes in three load-bearing walls in his workshop to build a particle accelerator, Henry and his crew were called in.

After the Bot Fight (as Henry’s team called it, and he never corrected them as long as they didn’t say it in front of Mr. Stark or Mr. Rhodes), they also expanded the holding facilities beneath the Mansion's workshop floor, thought they didn’t ask questions about what it would hold. 

When Stark Tower in New York was under construction, Mr. Stark (and more importantly, Ms. Potts) trusted no one else to hand the power couplings and wiring that would allow the building to use arc reactor technology as well as integrate JARVIS into every system. After the Battle of New York, they fixed the Tower first (paying special attention to JARVIS’s mainframe and security) before working on the rest of the city.

And now H&H was hard at work in the depths of the Malibu Mansion, clearing the debris left in the wake of the Mandarin terrorist attack.

“I can't decide if this is better or worse,” Jimmy Cho said, shoveling another load of gravel that had once been supporting wall away from the central hub of the wreaked workshop.

“Better or worse than what?” Randy Wright asked. Unaccustomed to flight, he was still struggling with jet lag from New York. Henry was grateful for guys who were willing to fly across country at a moment's notice, but he had to admit that it sometimes took them some time to get into the swing of the work after.

"New York," Cho answered. "I mean, there's <less> damage than New York but it's..."

"Compre-fucking-hensive," Maxwell Smith finished. "Part-a me says Mr. Stark'd be better off blowing the fucking thing an' startin' over."

There was an awkward, tight silence. Henry kept his peace, though it was definitely tempting to break it. Finally, Cho broke in. "Max, you know that Stark's..."

"Dead?" Smith snorted. "Yeah, try the other one."

"He went down," Wright said. "On national television. Ms. Potts said that he was in the house when it detached from the cliff face. No on could have—" This time he didn't have to be interrupted. He stopped himself, maybe thinking of other things that no one else had ever done.

"No one my ass. Tell you what, you show me a body, I'll throw you a fucking funeral. Until then, I don't get why the fuck we have to clear this place out when it's probably going to become another load of ocean shit anyway. Lights ain't on, doors don't work, suits're smashed up, and even the Computer ain't said anything since we've gotten here."

The guys nodded and held their breath, listening. Hopeful, maybe. Creepy as it could be to know you were always being watched, most of the guys liked it when JARVIS—the Computer—could be persuaded to talk to them. Henry had been keeping up a steady stream of updates, both out loud where he know JARVIS had microphone pick-ups and also digitally in periodic emails to Ms. Potts, but hadn't heard back on either front. Henry figured that most of the guys believed at JARVIS was just Mr. Starks somewhat more awesome version of Siri, but he had to admit that with the AI silent and lights dimmed to emergency power, the house seemed dead. Perhaps even more dead than Tony Stark.

Henry wouldn't be surprised if, on the rebuild, Mr. Stark didn't make his home and JARVIS more able to defend themselves.

"What the—?" One second Smith had been working, the next he was jumping back as the floor of the workshop began to iris open with a great crunching, groaning noise. 

All around Henry, the guys swore and muttered and moved away from the openning, in some cases scrambling up piles of debris so they could get safely out of the way of whatever was coming.

For a moment, staring into an abyss filled with dozens of glowing, threatening eyes and chest-plates, Henry wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into all those years ago. This was tech and computers and enemies that they had never been trained for. But when the suits (in all different shapes, colors, designs and uses) powered up and blasted up out of the holding area he had helped install after the whole particle accelerator mess, he couldn't help but loose a whoop with the rest of the crew.

"I told you!" Wright crowed. "I told you the fucker weren't dead!"

"You fucking did not," Smith snapped, but he was grinning. They all were.

"Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen," JARVIS said pleasantly from a slightly staticky wall-mount. "You have all been very archeopteryx."

"Hear that? Dude!" Cho fist bumped Wright and Henry couldn't stop himself from grinning right along. “The Computer’s back up, too!

A man could attribute many good qualities to Tony Stark, but modesty and simplicity were not on the list. Mr. Stark had once referred to himself as the greatest phoenix metaphor that had ever been personified. Henry thought, watching Mr. Stark’s suits fly into the distance, intent on their mission (which was no doubt the usual Stark combination of destruction and salvation) that it was good to remember that a man could bring something back from the underworld and fly with it, that a man could burn down to ashes and rise up as something more.

"Okay, eggheads, the show's over!" He called when the last of the suits had vanished over the horizon. "Let's get this place fixed up for Mr. Stark and Ms. Potts."

There was some grumbling, but no one meant it (much). The crew set to with a renewed energy. It was better to build for a phoenix than a ghost.

They were in the age of monsters and aliens and heroes, and as long as the world kept spinning, business would be good for folks in the business of fixing and building things.

Henry found it reassuring to be reminded that where there are phoenixes, superheroes and millionaires, there would always be a job and good money for a guy ready to sweep up the ashes and do a touch-up job on the paint.

 

**Author's Note:**

> No, seriously, typos. I reserve the right to edit this later if desired because it just must be POSTED NOW. Yes. Thank you and I do apologize.


End file.
